TORONTO - Industrial Light & Magic on Monday took the wraps off of its new and expanded Vancouver studio as it continues work on a new Star Wars franchise.
The VFX division of Lucasfilm, and a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, launched the 30,000 square foot feature visual effects facility in the city's downtown Gastown district.
Around 200 artists are expected to be at work at in the new Vancouver operation by summer 2014, with movies like Transformers 4, World of Warcraft and around a third of the production on Star Wars Episode VII to be done in the west coast city. ...
California continues to get kicked in the backside because of the torrent of free money that British Columbia and other Canadian provinces and countries throw at our fine, entertainment conglomerates.
There are really only two ways to counter this:
1) Countervailing tariffs get put in place against foreign subsidies (but this won't counter subsidies in New York, Georgia, Louisiana and other United States).
2) California offers tax subsidies that are competitive (or close to) with British Columbia, New York, Georgia, etc., etc.
But to strip away the b.s., there are no ideal solutions here. Only ones that are less shitty than the non-solutions we have now. Giving free money to large corporations has long-since become a fine, American tradition. We hand out dollars to banks, car companies, owners of big league sports franchises, so why the hell not Warner Bros., Disney, Viacom, and Twentieth Century Fox?
I detest the tradition and practice, since it turns free-market capitalism on its head, but twenty-first century America is what it is.
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"Lucasfilm, ( a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company) launched the 30,000 square foot feature visual effects facility in the city's downtown Gastown district."
This comes not long after Pixar (also owned by Disney Corp.) shuttered their downtown Vancouver facility.
(Did ILM move into the now vacant Pixar studio in Vancouver ? More likely they spent millions of dollars building a new facility ... but of course it's these pesky animators and vfx artist's salaries that are driving costs up, don't you know ?)
Anyone working at ILM Vancouver should not get too comfortable. These things can crash and burn overnight . At least you're not in Florida ...
It is in fact the same building.
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